A drop in the number of homeless individuals on the streets may be a regional trend as we see Alameda County is reporting a decline similar to one seen in San Francisco over the last two years.
Alameda County released its preliminary numbers from its point-in-time homeless census on Monday, and it's mostly good news all around. Oakland saw a very significant 20% in the number of people living on the streets since 2024, while the county as a whole recorded a 13% overall drop.
The latest numbers are for sure a relief for local officials, after 2024's point-in-time count saw a 9% rise in homelessness in Oakland, and a smaller 4% drop countywide.
San Francisco released its preliminary point-in-time count last week and recorded a 4% drop in homelessness in the same two-year span. And while San Francisco changed its methodology for the count this year, conducting the census in the early morning hours instead of at night, Oakland made this switch in 2024 and theirs is therefore a more apples-to-apples comparison.
Advocates and city officials say the numbers, particularly taken in the context of other cities in the region, reflect the positive results of local programs to prevent new homelessness and to convey people into stable housing.
"What’s consistent across these communities is they invested dollars into getting people back into housing,” says Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, speaking to Bay Area News Group.
As the Chronicle notes, advocates are concerned that the positive trend in Oakland could be temporary, as the city continues to remove hundreds of beds and tiny-home cabins from its shelter system due to budget cuts.
Around 1,300 volunteers conducted Alameda County's federally mandated point-in-time count one morning in January, and this year found 8,201 individuals experiencing homelessness, down from 9,450 in 2024.
And while Oakland saw a significant drop this year, some of that may be due to people crossing city lines into other areas, like Berkeley, which saw a 4% uptick since 2024. (In 2024's count, Berkeley saw a significant, 45% decline in homelessness, while Oakland saw an uptick.)
But Jonathan Russell, director of the Alameda County Department of Housing and Homelessness, tells Bay Area News Group this is overall good news. "We see it as momentum, and we want to keep it going," Russell says.
The region as a whole has seen a mixed bag of trends when it comes to these counts. Sonoma County, which has been conducting annual point-in-time homeless counts for a number of years, recorded its lowest number of homeless in 18 years in its 2025 count, with a drop of over 20% from 2024, and its latest numbers for 2026 have not yet been released.
Meanwhile, Santa Clara County's last count in 2025 saw an 8% increase in homelessness. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, as Bay Area News Group notes, has been campaigning for governor on the claim that he decreased homelessness in his city, which is only partly true — the number of unsheltered homeless fell by 10% in San Jose proper, while it remained flat in the county as a whole.
While Oakland's drop in the homeless count seems dramatic this year at 20%, compared to 2022's count and without accounting for 2024's uptick, it marks only a 13% decline over 4 years.
As Russell, the county's homeless czar, tells the Chronicle, his department is now focused on growing and maintaining the county's shelter stock. "Our goal is not just to open new [shelters] and let others close, but to really sustain them. So a big part of our first investments going into this year is going to be enhancing and increasing shelter funding for current providers to make sure they can stay open," he says.
Related: New San Francisco Homeless Census Shows Slight Drop, But Methodology Also Changed
